Korea Strait (14 page)

“Gal ryeom ni ka?”
the coxswain yelled. “You go?”

“Nay, nay,”
Dan said, wondering why the Korean and English were exact opposites. He made a get-the-hell-in-there gesture. The coxswain shrugged, gauged the roll, and whipped the wheel over as the sail rolled to port.

As the hulls collided with a head-jerking slam the other Koreans grabbed him bodily and pitched him out. Dan hit on his feet, but staggered as the roll came back at him. His shoes flew out from under him on slippery rubber tiles. He went down hard and started sliding back down into the sea.

The two submariners hurled themselves at him. One smashed him in the skull with a hard object. Dazed, still sliding backward, Dan sucked a breath, anticipating a long time underwater. The second man got a line around him. Dan got his hands on it and together, somehow, they dragged him up to the sail. A sea hit them there, smacking them into the wet rubber that coated the steel. When it receded he saw recessed rungs leading up the sail. The sailors gave him a boost. Clinging hard against the roll, the centrifugal force of which got wilder the higher he climbed, he reached the top at last and ducked through an access cutout and came up in a little semienclosed cockpit.

“Welcome to
San Francisco,”
a jaygee in a green foul-weather jacket yelled. “Skipper's below. Let's get you down there and dried off.”

The hatch led to a ladder trunk that went down like a deep well. Dan kept his mind on his hands. They were burned from the lines, stinging from the salt, but if he slipped he'd fall sixty feet, break his legs or worse. He went down and down.

At last he stepped off, sopping wet, into the control room. Everyone was in blue coveralls. A tall officer with close-cropped champagne hair and high cheekbones shook his hand. “Dan? Thought that was you on the horn. Andy Mangum. Sixth Company.”

. . .

MANGUM'S cabin was half the size of Dan's on
Chung Nam,
about like four shower stalls put together. The overhead curved in: they were just beneath the top of the pressure hull. Mangum sat on the bunk. Dan got the single chair, with the little modular desk folded up.

“Thanks for the b-robe.” He fingered Mangum's gold-piped blue Naval Academy bathrobe.

“We're running your uniform through the wash and dry. Have it back in half an hour.” Mangum leaned back. They'd already gone through the usual drill of Annapolis classmates running into each other on active duty, who was where, who'd gotten out, who'd been passed over. “Okay, what can I do for you?”

“First off, have you sent that message yet?”

“What message?”

“The one to SUBPAC. Saying you weren't going to play with us anymore.”

“I've got it drafted.” Mangum didn't meet his eyes.

“But have you sent it?”

“I hope that isn't what you came all the way over here for. To get me not to. Because it's not gonna happen.” He shook his head. “I can't gamble the boat and my guys' lives on a bunch of overzealous shiphandlers.”

“That's got to be your call,” Dan said.

“Oh, it will be. Believe me. And if I have to err, it's on the side of caution. You had command, right? A couple of them?”

“Officially just one.”

“Surface type?”

“Destroyer. Yeah.”

“So you know what I mean. But the margins are narrower with no reserve buoyancy. We operate in a zero-error environment down here.”

Dan noticed for the first time there was no motion whatsover. “We're submerged?”

“Two hundred feet. Eight knots.”

“Very smooth.” He'd sniffed the air in the control room, expecting the afterwhiff of fire, of a burning flare. There'd been nothing; the air had been polished clean, sterile, bland.

“So, given that's not negotiable, I hope you didn't come just for
that.” Mangum waited, palms cupping his kneecaps. “So, why
did
you come?”

“Actually I had something to give you.”

He'd had them wrap it in a waterproof chart pouch. He unsealed it and took out the paper. Held it out. “From the captain of the ship that did the drive-by on you.”

Mangum took it, looking suspicious. He glanced down the message. “Boy,” he said.

“Takes a while to get the gist of what he's trying to say.”

“I guess he writes better English than I do Korean.”

“It's an apology.”

“I can see that.”

Dan gave him the second sheet. “And here's another one, handwritten, from the ROK COMDESRON. Commodore Mm Jun Jung. They take apologies seriously.”

“I've worked with the Japanese. Same same.”

“Then you know they won't be happy campers if we just blow these off.” Not giving Mangum a chance to argue back, he went on, “I also want to tell you, why you're getting all this personal attention from our allies here. Why I came over in person. I didn't want this on the VHF, or in anybody's signal log. And I want your assurance you never heard it from me.”

Mangum hesitated. At last he said, “Okay. What?”

“I got this from the naval attache in Seoul. We're going to pull out of Korea. Part of the reduction of forces.”

“What?
Pull out?”

“That was my reaction. The administration's already downsized the Army; we've got to take a cut too. If the Koreans can take over the sea lanes, we'll lease them six destroyers, buy them four more diesel boats, and retrograde.”

Mangum said anxiously, “Did he say anything about the forces out of Japan?”

“It was a she. Oh, you guys'll stay. But that's what this exercise is about. Whether they're good enough to deal with the North Koreans on their own.”

“Are they? What do you think?”

Dan pondered that, finally decided the honest answer was “I haven't seen enough yet to make that call, Andy. But I think what it
means in this context—bottom line is what we owe, actually what I owe, the Navy. And that's a bona fide, no-shit assessment of the ROK's antisubmarine abilities. The chain of command needs an objective reading. Without that, they can't vote yea or nay on the pull-out. What I'm afraid of is that if they don't give a clear signal, this administration'll go for the low-cost option: get out. And in that case, if they're
not
ready—”

“We'd have a real bitch-up,” Mangum supplied. “If the North decided to try again.”

Dan was waiting for him to make the connection when someone tapped on the door. Mangum said, “Come in.” A young man in the ubiquitous blue coveralls didn't actually enter—there was literally no room to—but slid a tray in. Mangum settled it on his lap. “Coffee?”

“Thanks.”

“How's the commander's uniform doing, Cus?”

“Out of the wash, in the dry, Skip.”

Mangum nodded and the crewman closed the door. He handed Dan a cup. “And this all relates to me, how?”

“If you don't play, there's no exercise.”

“They have their own boat. The new one.”

“It's too easy with just one targ—uh, with just one opponent.”

”We
are not the targets,” Mangum observed mildly.

“I didn't say you were.”

“We pull out of here, the U.S. I mean, there'll be tanks in Seoul a week later.”

“That's my thought too, but it's not my call. My bailiwick's to do this exercise and give them a valid grade.”

He sipped the coffee and waited. After a couple of seconds the submariner said, “When they see that periscope, visually I mean, they don't know the range. We've got some new features that disappear us from radar. I just can't have them charging in on me.”

“It's a valid concern. I'm willing to give up realism for safety.”

“What are you offering?”

“Guaranteed two-thousand-yard standoff, under no circumstances to be violated. That's double what's in the op order. Also a three-ping signal. We hear three pings active from you, the exercise is over.”

“Safety courses?”

“Better than that. Everyone goes dead in the water until you redistance and put up a green flare.”

“Fuck that. I'm not cycling that fucking flare ejector again till I have the shipyard look at it.”

“Well then, till you get your comm mast up and give us a pritac all clear.”

“If they see a scope at all, they're to turn and put it on their beam.”

“If that's how you want it. Sure.”

“How's the OTC gonna get this word out to his people?”

Dan held out the third piece of paper. “Actually it's in Korean, but it spells out exactly what happens to any CO who gets inside two thousand yards of you. Let's just say he retires with no legs, no balls, and one eye ripped out.”

“Now we're talking,” said Mangum. He fanned himself with the papers, portraying Man in Deep Thought. “Well, I can't think of anything else I can get out of you. Except what really happened with the
Horn.”

Dan was continually surprised at how many people had heard about what was supposedly compartmented top secret. As far as rumor, gossip, and backstairs intrigue, the Navy was like a small-town church choir. “I can't tell you anything more than what you probably already heard. We figure it was a drifting mine. Just managed to save her.”

“So why's there chain-link and guards around her at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard?”

“I lost some of my people. Some very good people. I hope that never happens to you, Andy.”

Mangum regarded him for a moment more. “Well, guess what? There's things I can't tell you either. I guess we have to wait for our memoirs?”

“Yeah. Our memoirs. We're go, then? You're back in?”

“I guess so. But I want your TAG guys on the scope too, when they're working close in.”

Another tap heralded Dan's uniform, cleaned, pressed, on a hanger. “We dried his shoes on low heat,” the crewman said. “But he's just going to get them wet again.”

“We got a pair of boots we can lose?”

“Size?”

“Ten,” Dan said.

“Take a good look at this guy,” Mangum said to the crewman. “This is the most decorated guy on active duty in the U.S. Navy. Commander Dan Lenson. But hardly anybody knows his name outside of it.”

“It's a real honor, sir,” the crewman said.

“You bilger,” Dan muttered to his classmate.

“Hey, and maybe a worn-out set of rain gear, Cus?”

“We'll take a look, sir,” the crewman said. “How worn-out's it got to be?”

“This dude holds the Medal of Honor. That give you a hint?”

“Message received, Captain,” the crewman said. He looked at Dan as if he were a demigod, as if he wanted to touch him but was afraid to. Dan wished Mangum hadn't said all that.

Mangum reached for a phone on the bulkhead. “Captain. Return to pickup point and prepare to surface. Complete three-sixty sonar search. Course into prevailing sea.” To Dan, “We'll be there in twenty minutes. Ever seen one of these?”

Dan said, “I'd be honored if you'd show me around, Andy. I'd like to see your—boat. But really, they don't need to know all that stuff you were telling him.”

“I'll tell them whatever I goddamn well want to tell them. Who's the fucking CO here? You or me?” His classmate punched the phone again. “XO? Everybody off watch, in the crew's mess, ten minutes.”

THE whaleboat, which had stood off while Dan was below, took him loping back over the waves. The rain had eased off, the squall-clouds moved on. It was smoother headed downsea. Small brown birds soared and dipped, flinging their wings over at each crest as if they too were enjoying themselves. He wiggled his toes deliriously in dry socks, in the new boots. All he had to do now was make sure the Koreans restrained themselves, kept safety in mind, and this whole thing might yet work out.

It occurred to him that if it didn't—if anything
did
happen to one of the subs, even just a bent ‘scope, anything at all from here on till the end of SATYRE 17—he could expect to be hammered, having coaxed the reluctant Mangum back into play.

But that didn't worry him. It was too nice a day. He even saw, gradually wearing its way through the gray denim of the departing squall, a bright patch he suspected might be the sun.

HE ducked his head going into CIC, missing the air duct that'd creamed him before, and caught Henrickson's eye. The analyst looked unwontedly grim. He said a word to the sonarman he'd been talking to, patted his shoulder, and got up and came Dan's way, carrying a clipboard. “A word?”

“Hey, Monty.”

“How'd it go? Heard you went over to
San Fran.”

“On the whole good, I think. She's back in the game, given some additional precautions. What is it? O'Quinn?”

“What? No.”

Henrickson handed Dan the clipboard. He ran his finger down the message headers. It was from CTF 74—the U.S. task force assigned to the exercise, that would be Harry Fatass Leakham—to COMTAG, Commander, Tactical Analysis Group, Little Creek, Virginia.

4 (C) Safety is paramount in all exercise operations. It is the concern of this commander that the personal direction being exercised on COMASWRON 51 by the TAG representative is prejudicial to the safety of maneuvers. Numerous close passes at dangerously high speeds inside danger zones have been noted.

5 (C) It has also been observed that a close relationship seems to exist between the senior TAG team member, CDR. D. V. Lenson, USN, and COMASWRON 51, Commo. Jung Min Jun, ROKN. This unprofessional relationship operates to the detriment of the US components in the exercise.

6. (S) It is therefore proposed that CDR Lenson be immediately relieved as exercise director and replaced either by this commander's chief of staff or other TAG personnel now on scene.

The betrayal and outrage felt like incipient lightning. Like a day, out sailing, when he'd bent to run out more scope of anchor line as a
thunderstorm came on, and felt the electrical charge thrilling up his fists from where they gripped the sea-soaked nylon. “Unprofessional relationship”? That could only mean one thing in this context. He'd suspected Leakham had a hard-on for him, but this was out of the ballpark. He looked up. “How'd we get this, Monty?”